Enthroned
by JadeEye
Summary: Rei's a princess–an illegitimate one, if you must know, and an unruly one at that. So when her brother becomes king, he'll do anything to get her off his hands, even marry her off! Before Rei knows it, she's married to a drunkard of a king...
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** Enthroned

**Date:** 4.14.11

**Rating:** T

**Summary**: Rei's a princess–an illegitimate one, if you must know, and an unruly one at that. So when her brother becomes king, he'll do anything to get her off his hands, even marry her off! Before Rei knows it, she's married to a drunkard of a king–but is there more to him than meets the eye?

**Author's Notes:** I came up with this a few summers ago, didn't work on it for months, and then was able to use it for a class project. As a result, it's pretty much already drafted out, so I wanted to finally start posting it for you guys – especially since STC is still a ways away. It's a different Rei than you're probably used to…

Tremendous thanks to Jade. She is too wonderful for words.

**Disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

L

An Elysian ensign was standing guard at the parapet overlooking the shore when a burst of hisses and cursing from below drew his attention. He lifted his crossbow, looking down to aim. His hands shook slightly, his knuckles white. It was his first day as a palace guard, and he was anxiously eager to do a good job.

But the more experienced guard with whom he was on duty glanced down and laughed. "At ease, boy. There's no need to shoot anyone. Look."

The ensign obeyed, leaning over the parapet. The source of all the hissing and cursing was a black-haired girl in a gown that was soaked nearly to her knees, the hem caked with sand. She was shrieking and kicking at the two stoic-faced guards who were dragging her from the shore to the palace gates.

He lifted his eyes to his superior, aghast. "A prostitute?" He had thought that the nobles at court had special, kept ladies for that sort of thing, not whores dragged off the street.

The other guard howled with laughter. "A prostitute? You dolf, that's the princess! They probably caught her riding His Highness's horse on the beach without permission again."

"You think this is funny, Chad?" came a shout from below, and the young guard looked down to see that the princess was on the palace side of the parapet now, glaring straight up at them and yanking her arms free of the guards' hold.

"I do, Princess Rei!" the older guard called down to her. "You're carrying on so that the new guard up here just mistook you for a street wench!"

Visions of being drawn and quartered danced before the ensign's eyes. He felt the blood drain from his face.

But instead of shouting an order to have him clapped in irons and marched to the dungeons, the princess just retorted loudly, "That's funny, Chad, I mistook your wife for the same thing the first time I saw her!"

L

"Ruining your best day gown. Taking His Majesty's favorite horse out of the stables without permission. Squabbling with the _guards–_" Luna put down the roll of parchment with an exaggerated care that suggested she greatly wanted to slap it down but was too well-bred to do so, "allbefore breakfast! Well, never let anyone tell you that you are not an over-achiever, Princess."

Said princess had thrown herself into an armchair across from her former governess, now glorified lady-in-waiting. Water still dripped from her soaked gown, and she had her arms crossed over her chest. "Chad hardly counts as just a guard," she said. "I've known him since we were children. His mother was my wet nurse. We drank from the same–"

"It doesn't matter if you drank from the same…female," Luna interrupted delicately, ignoring Rei's saucy "Breast? Do you mean to say breast, Luna?" "He is a commoner, and you are a princess. Regardless of…circumstances."

She paused as if to give Rei a moment to interpret her hint. As if Rei had somehow managed to forget that she was not a _real_ princess, that she was the late king's illegitimate seventeen-year-old daughter and her current title of princess had been acquired only through a decree made by the late king from his deathbed a year ago.

Rei had not forgotten this fact. It was very difficult to, when everyone in the palace, from the maids who served her breakfast on the coral guest china instead of the royal mother-of-pearl dishes, to her own half-brother, King Endymion, who would not let her participate fully in the nobles' councils. If she had been a true princess, for example, she would be in one of his war councils at this very moment, not up here in her tower chamber being scolded by Luna. And if she had been a true princess, a common lady-in-waiting like Luna, no matter what duke she was the fourth daughter of, would never have dared to speak to her so condescendingly.

"You're right, Luna." Rei swung her legs over the chair's arm and stood up. "I _am_ a princess. And as such, I order you to leave me for the day. Off you go." She made a shooing motion with one hand and began to unlace her gown with the other.

Luna made a scandalized sound–whether from Rei's words or the fact that she was beginning to undress in front of her, Rei didn't know–and swept out of the room.

"Good riddance," Rei muttered, shimmying out of her soaked skirts. A few minutes' work had her in a fresh gown and slippers. Her hair was stiff and knotted and smelled of salt from riding Endymion's beautiful new stallion nearly all the way to the point, where the palace walls sloped into the sea, so she gave up trying to brush it and just yanked it into the semblance of a braid and pinned it up. Then she strode through her rooms to the door and yanked it open.

The same guard who has been on parapet patrol with Chad stood just outside it. His eyes widened at her. He was red-faced, his arms stiff at his sides, and his eyes looked anywhere but at her as he blurted out, "His Highness requests that you pass the day in your chambers until he can come speak to you!"

Rei swallowed a sigh. Before their father's death, she and Endymion had always joked that getting a "request" from their father was like finding a jellyfish in the water. Phrased as something so polite, it seemed easy to avoid, floating so slowly, but try to be clever and swim around it, and you just found yourself swimming into a whole smack of them. Like the time he had "requested" that Endymion stop taking Rei to the guards' grounds to ride the horses, and they had decided to start sneaking out at night to do it instead–until the hostler who had turned a blind eye to their riding was turned out of the palace on the king's orders. Now, Endymion was the one who gave orders and thinly veiled them as requests. Sometimes she felt like Endymion the one who had died hadn't been her father but Endymion.

Rei looked at the guard. He was watching her from beneath his bangs like a puppy expecting to be kicked.

She smiled demurely at him. "Of course. I'll be waiting." Stepping back into her chambers and letting the door fall shut behind her, she leaned against it and listened for the guard's footsteps to head back down the stairs.

But there was nothing but the squeak of his new leather boots as he shifted slightly.

Rei hrmphed. He must have been ordered to stand on guard there like a human door bolt, since it wasn't seemly actually to bolt a lady's door from the outside. Although Endymion would snort at her if she claimed to be a lady, she thought with a twist of her lips, remembering how he had made fun of her all the times she stole his outgrown riding clothes to wear herself.

That had been before he was king, though.

She ignored the melancholy that was wriggling its grimy fingers into her thoughts and shucked off the gown that she had just put on. She changed into an old pair of the very riding clothes she had stolen a while back and kept hidden in her drawers for occasions such as this. She tied her hair back more securely, scraped the last of the sand from the soles of her boots, and sat on her windowsill. It was open to the air outside, giving her what would have been a breathtaking view of the ocean if she wasn't so used to seeing it every day. The breathtaking view was also a bit dizzying, when you stared out at it with your legs hanging over the open, empty space with nothing below you but the rest of the castle, twenty feet down, but Rei was accustomed to this, too. This wasn't the first time she had used this route to creep out of her tower room.

There were shells embedded every few feet in the rough stone, rather like a flattened staircase, as though the people who had built the tower had wanted handholds for themselves as they built it. A sensible plan, in Rei's opinion, especially as she didn't believe what the tales said about Elysion's castle having been a gift from the gods. It was said that a tremendous wave had crashed down and swept all the unworthy from the earth, leaving behind only the true King and his followers, and they had been the first Elysians. As the wave drained away, a glistening castle of pink-white stone as smooth as the inside of a conch shell had been left behind. Rei didn't know _how_ a place as magnificent as the palace had been built, but she was sure that the flood story had to be rubbish, probably just some long-ago courtier's attempt to ingratiate himself to the king by glorifying him.

She eased herself over the sill, finding the first shell with her foot, then the next with her other foot. Shell by shell, she eased herself down, the castle's brine-roughened stone walls catching occasionally at her tunic. Her heart was beating fast by the time she got to the point where the handholds ended, just a few feet away from the parapet. This was always her least favorite part, the jump to the parapet. If she didn't make it, she would drop the fifteen feet to the shore below and break quite a few bones, if not worse.

But she had made the jump a dozen times before, and she made it this time, too. From there, it was a simple matter of sneaking past Chad–he was talking to a squad doing drills in the courtyard below–to the passageway that led to the guards' quarters. Located in one of their armory lockers was a grille that she slithered into, banging her hip painfully on the stone. There was a small compartment beneath it, like a very small and ancient cellar, which their father had shown to Endymion when he was fifteen and which Rei, following them without their knowledge, had also seen. He had explained to Endymion that the most dangerous rebellion always came from within the king's own warriors, and this place had been kept as a secret for generations for Elysian kings to listen in on their own guards. Little did her father or her brother ever suspect, Rei imagined, that a totally unrelated party would use it to spy on _them. _The little cellar led off into a cramped tunnel that took her, among other places, a craggy crack through which she could peer down into the small chamber where Endymion preferred to hold his councils of war.

Despite its small size, the chamber was as luxuriously equipped as all the others in the castle, dominated by a long, ancient table of polished driftwood and hung with tapestries. It was one of the colder rooms in the palace, too deep inside the cliff to receive any of the balmy breezes off the sea. Rei's brother, King Endymion, sat at the head of the table, the top of his dark black hair just barely visible from the angle through which Rei could see through the tiny crack. The white- and silver-haired heads to his left were several noblemen, including Lords Malachi and Artemis, and to his right were two dark heads that had to belong to the marquis and marchioness of Bleu.

Rei's hand crept up surreptitiously to pat down her salt-crusted hair, for all that she knew that if anyone happened to spot her in her hiding spot, she would have much bigger concerns than the marquis witnessing her disheveled appearance. The marquis, Sapphire, was the same age as Endymion but had been marquis for much longer than Endymion had been king. His father had died when he and his sister, Ami, were little more than children. He was not often at court, and even when he was, Rei rarely saw him, for he was always closed-up in secret councils with her brother, but when he did see her, he always greeted her cordially and bowed the exact angle demanded for a princess of Elysion, not a degree less.

As Rei watched, the marchioness turned her head and said something to Endymion. There was too much murmuring going on in the room for Rei to hear what she said, but her brother inclined his head to listen, and Sapphire, on Ami's other side, leaned closer as well, his gloved hand curling on the tabletop.

If only Endymion would treat Rei the way Sapphire treated Ami! Ami wasn't officially the marchioness of Bleu; whomever Sapphire married–Rei cringed at the thought–would hold that title, but Ami may as well have been, for Sapphire treated her as his equal in all things. She had her own seal, she ran the estate in his absences, she always accompanied him to council meetings–and when she spoke, he listened.

Endymion was nodding now. He touched Ami's hand once, gratefully, and then stood.

The noise in the room died down, but not completely. Though most heads turned toward him, their owners falling silent, a few glanced toward him and then away again, continuing their conversation–namely, the silver-haired noblemen across from Sapphire and Ami.

Rei glared at them from her hiding spot, simmering. It was one thing for a nobleman's daughter like Luna to condescend to Rei, an illegitimate princess, but it was quite another for noblemen to disrespect their pure-blooded king! Endymion was the dead queen and king's son, of older, bluer blood than any other king or prince around, more so than the Nemesian princes who were little more than warlords, and certainly more so than Andalusia's regent-turned-king–how _dare_ these men disrespect him so!

"Excuse me," Ami said in her soft, clear voice that cut through the lower voices of the men. "I believe our king has something to say."

The men fell quiet, but their expressions were those of adults humoring a child. Rei couldn't see Endymion's face, but she would have put money on it being cold and hard.

"There is news of Nemesis," was all he said, and he sat back down, his head turning toward Sapphire. Rei saw his profile. His jaw was clenched.

"What is it?" asked one of the lords near the foot of the table. "Has it been uncovered whether the crash in which the king and crown prince were killed was part of one of the other prince's plots?"

Sapphire turned his head toward the nobleman. He did not stand, but his shoulders and back were rod-straight, as usual. "We have not yet been able to ascertain whether one of the princes arranged for the accident. But last week, one of the last two living Nemesian princes, Rubeus, was found dead. His after-supper tea had been poisoned. We believe that his brother, Diamond, is the party responsible for the poisoning."

"Then the in-fighting among the Nemesians is done at last," said a lord at the end of the table whose name Rei would have known had she ever paid attention to Luna's endless drillings about who was lord of what and whether they merited a "Your Excellency" or "Your Grace." "We'll be able to resume trade with them without worrying about one brother's army picking off our caravans for fear that we were supporting another brother."

"Not so quickly, Lord Nephrite," Ami said. "Rubeus's loss is not necessarily our gain."

Rei glanced back at her brother. He was sitting far back in his chair, back pressed against it, gripping the table edge as though to brace himself against it as he stared straight ahead.

Ami continued, "In the time since we received the news of Rubeus's death, Diamond has declared war upon Tranquisel and absorbed Lunaria."

Gasps burst from around the table. Tranquisel was a small country bordering Nemesis to the south. Rei knew that it shared no borders with Elysion, but the fact that Diamond was blithely marching to war with it when he had only just gained control of his own country spoke volumes about his confidence–or about the size of his army.

Still, this was nothing compared to the news about Lunaria. That tiny kingdom _did_ share a border with Elysion, though it was only a few miles long at most. On top of that, its Crown Princess Serenity, who was so beautiful that minstrels sang ballads about her, had been betrothed to Endymion since she was in her cradle. Their marriage had been set for the upcoming summer.

So what did this mean? Did Diamond mean to take Serenity for himself? Did he really think Endymion would stand for this? Elysion was barely half Nemesis's size, but such an insult could not go ignored. Serenity was Endymion's, this meant _war_–

Endymion stood up, abruptly. "I have summoned you here today to declare war on Nemesis."

Protest broke out at once. "Your Highness," Ami began, her eyes wide.

"Much too rash–" said Malachite.

"The sheer number of men Diamond has at his disposal–" another was saying.

"–and he hasn't threatened _us_ yet," blustered a third.

Rei, who had been watching her brother's jaw tighten more and more with each voice, looked away when she heard Sapphire's quiet voice say, "Your Majesty," and watched him splay his hand carefully on the tabletop.

"Yes?" Endymion said loudly over the racket of the noblemen.

"I would not advise war yet," Sapphire said slowly, his gaze and voice steady. "We have only just received the news of the absorption. It could be that Diamond intends to use the princess as a bargaining piece to gain alliance with you and will not touch her."

"In which case declaring war on him might remove his only incentive not to marry Serenity himself," Ami added.

"We are already at war!" Endymion snapped. "We have an army positioned to charge into his land, and he has one waiting to meet them! The only thing remaining is a bit of parchment declaring that we intend to kill each other!"

Lord Artemis was frowning. "A bit of parchment which would need all of our seals on it."

Endymion turned toward him. "Excuse me?"

Rather than being cowed by Endymion's icy tone, Lord Artemis pursed his lips disapprovingly. "A declaration of war requires ratification by at least two-thirds of this council. You know that, Endymion."

"You speak," Endymion said softly, "as though two-thirds of you would not be willing to sign this parchment."

"I believe you will find that to be the case," said Lord Malachi.

Endymion's head turned toward him. "I'm afraid you will have to explain your reluctance to me." He was still using his dangerous voice, the one he used on Rei when he found she had borrowed his riding gear without permission. "I was under the impression that I was your king and that subjects are meant to obey their king's commands."

There was silence for a moment, some uncomfortable shifting. Then Lord Nephrite said, his expression serious but his tone sly, almost deprecating, "We are not the only ones you have trouble forcing to obey your orders, are we, Your Majesty?"

A cry of outrage escaped Rei. In the silence that had followed the nobleman's defiance, it was clearly audible. Everyone in the room jerked around to look up at the ceiling where she was.

Rei's heart leapt into her mouth, the blood seeming to drain from every inch of her body as she shrank backward. Then she was scrambling through the tunnel, racing back toward the cellar. She fairly flew across the parapet, her heart pounding crazily as she scrambled up the shells in the tower wall, shredding the skin of her palms in her haste, her mind oscillating wildly from certainty that no one would think the noise had come from her, since she had a guard stationed at her door, to distress, for Endymion somehow had a sixth sense about these things just as her father had; he would somehow guess that it had been her–

She had just managed to heave one leg over her windowsill when the door to her bedchamber swung open. Her eyes met Endymion's burning blue ones, and for a minute, she felt her body waver, tipping dangerously far back into empty air. Then she pitched forward and toppled onto the floor on top of the wet, sandy gown she had discarded on her floor that morning.

There was a gasp. Rei's eyes slid past Endymion to see the guard from before standing behind him, his eyes wide and fixed on Rei.

Endymion did not turn. "You may leave, ensign."

The guard fled faster than a crab scuttling from a flock of gulls. The door fell shut, leaving her alone with Endymion.

"Not very brave, that one," Rei said with a crooked smile, trying to sound casual and unconcerned, as though she thought her brother had just come up for a spot of idle conversation. Her breathlessness from climbing up a whole tower rather ruined the attempt. "I don't know if he's cut out for guard work."

"Are you trying to have me overthrown, Rei?"

Rei's eyes flew wide. "Overthrown?" she echoed. "I want to _help_ you! If you'd just let me come to those councils like Ami does, I'd tell those old–"

"Like Ami does," Endymion repeated. His voice held the same dangerous edge he had used on Lord Artemis. "Tell me, Rei, when have you ever heard of the marchioness tromping across the beach unchaperoned, screeching like a fishwife in the courtyard for everyone from the vizier to the scullery maids to hear?"

A dull flush spread across Rei's neck. She hadn't felt embarrassed when Luna scolded her for that morning's antics, but hearing Endymion describe them like that made her feel as small as a grain of sand. "Sorry," she mumbled. "I didn't think–"

"You never do!" Endymion took a swift, angry step toward her. "You always do whatever you please, and I'm the one who looks ridiculous because of it! Even our servants laugh behind our backs at your constant attempts to disobey me, Rei! Do you know how that looks? How am I to convince the council members to trust my decisions to rule this kingdom when they see that I cannot even control my own _sister_?"

Rei stared at him. The stinging realization that the council members' disrespectful treatment of Endymion was _her_ fault stung her like sharp seashells underfoot. _She_ was the reason they wouldn't let him attack Nemesis to save Princess Serenity. _She_ was the reason that Endymion was sinking onto her bed now, his hands over his eyes and his jaw clenched as though against tears.

She twisted the hem of her tunic in her fingers. "I'm sorry, Endy," she whispered.

Endymion didn't say anything, just made a low, angry sound and dug the heels of his palms more deeply into his eyes. Rei flinched and curled her fingers more tightly into her tunic, thinking that if he were the marquis and she Lady Ami, she would touch his shoulder. Instead, she babbled out, "I'll stop, Endymion, I swear, I'll do everything right from now on. I'll be good, I'll be so good even the marchioness'll look like a scarlet woman next to me, I swear–"

A sharp rap at the door cut her off. Her eyes jumped to the door. Chad stood there stiffly, a scroll of parchment in his hand. The wax seal held a sun-shaped imprint.

"Your Highness," he said, bowing to Endymion. "There's a messenger for you."

Rei looked back at her brother just in time to see him standing up. His face was as blank and impassive as always, though red faintly rimmed his dark eyes. He brushed past her without a word, taking the scroll from Chad and exiting the chamber. His boots clipped audibly down the stairs.

Chad hesitated at the door. "All right, Princess?"

Rei sniffled, realizing for the first time that her nose was running. She swiped her sleeve across it. "Fine."

Chad nodded and closed the door.

Rei sniffled again, her eyes falling to the full-length mirror in the corner. Looking at her reflection, she felt suddenly disgusted by every bit of herself, from her tangled hair to her too-tan skin to the grubby, threadbare men's clothes she wore. It was no wonder that ensign had mistaken her for a street girl.

With savage fingers, she tore off the riding clothes. She pitched them out the window, watching them flap in the wind down to the ground like heavy, ugly brown birds that had forgotten how to fly. Then she turned back to her room and rang the bell for a bath.


	2. Chapter 2

**Title:** Enthroned

**Chapter:** 2

**Rating: **T

**Date:** 4.25.11

**Summary**: Rei's a princess–an illegitimate one, if you must know, and an unruly one at that. So when her brother becomes king, he'll do anything to get her off his hands, even marry her off! Before Rei knows it, she's married to a drunkard of a king–but is there more to him than meets the eye?

**Author's Notes:** Thank you to everyone for reading, and to Jade for posting!

**Disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

L

Rei tried really hard to keep her promise to be the perfect lady.

Really, really hard.

But three weeks of obeying Luna's every order – from wearing a corset at all times (even to bed) to improve her figure, to leaving half of all her meals on her plate, to repeating "The hay in Nehelay sways gaily daily" for hours at a time to improve what Luna called her ability to "drawl elegantly" – left Rei feeling like crawling up the walls of her tower room like some sort of giant human starfish.

So that day she decided that she deserved a break. What she really, _really_ wanted was a ride, to gallop down the length of the shore and taste the salt on her tongue as the water splashed up around her and Endy's horse, Kamen. But she didn't dare steal Kamen again. She would have to settle for just a walk along the shore.

In the afternoon, Luna had a last-minute fitting for the gown she would be wearing that night. A ball was being held for a Nehelenian ambassador who had come to court the day before, ostensibly to negotiate an alliance with Elysion against Nemesis. The fitting left Rei with at least an hour window in which to sneak outside.

It was more than doable: by three o'clock, Luna had left, and ten minutes later, Rei was shimmying her way down the tower wall. Fifteen minutes later, she was stumbling down onto the wet, packed sand just outside the palace wall. She stripped off her slippers, flexing her toes and wriggling them into the sand until it looked like she had no toes at all. She sighed happily at the sensation. She had almost forgotten what good, wet sand felt like, not like the grit that tended to blow into every nook and cranny of the palace and get stuck in annoying grains to her feet or her food.

What she really wanted, though, was to feel the water. Autumn was just beginning to blow its way across the kingdom, and in a few weeks' time, the water would be too cold to walk in without catching the ague. Rei glanced above her, making sure no one was on the parapet, and scurried out of the shelter of the rocks to the water's edge.

The tide splashed up onto her dress even though she had hiked her skirts up above her knees, the sound unnaturally loud in her ears. The water always seemed louder when it was cold, or maybe she was just too used to being cooped-up in her room with only Luna for company. Shivering as she sloshed deeper, she squinted at the cloudy gray horizon. It had been on a day like this that her father's pyre was sent out to sea. The wind had blown so hard that the pyre kept racing back toward the shore, as though her father's body refused to leave the palace. Several men had to get long poles and wade out into the water, pushing the pyre out past the sandbars. It had been almost completely burned-out by then, the fire nearly out and her father's blackened body disgracefully exposed. Rei could remember watching, from her position behind the nobles – for even though her father had decreed her a princess from his deathbed, she still had not been allowed to stand with Endymion at the side of the royal family – Endymion's jaw clench tighter and tighter as he watched.

Now, she looked out toward where the sandbar had been. It was covered now with water but had tighter curls of white foam forming above it, marking its position. She knew there was really nothing left of her father's body, that the water had dashed him down like shells into sand, just like all the other Elysian royals who were put to rest in their pyres at sea. But sometimes she felt a chill down her spine as she stood in the water, as though his body was resting in the deeper water just beyond the bar, waiting.

A shout broke through her thoughts. Rei spun around, her stomach sinking to her toes. But there was no guard on the parapet looking down at her and shouting the alert to yet again drag the princess back inside. Instead, a group of colorfully dressed women stood at the water's edge a few dozen yards away from Rei. They were looking out at the waves, gesturing violently at each other.

Rei cast another glance at the parapet and broke into a run toward the women, giving up on trying to keep her hem dry. As she drew closer, their shouting became intelligible.

"Get him! Go get him, you lazy creature!"

"But Mistress, I can't swim!"

Rei's eyes followed the first woman's pointing arm just in time to see a red flash appear and then disappear among the gray waves. Suddenly the woman's near hysterics made sense. More hastily than she ever had in her life, she wrestled off her outermost layer of skirts and ran forward into the tide.

The water's freezing temperature was like a punch in the teeth, lighting up every nerve in her body. Rei gritted her chattering teeth and forced herself to begin kicking, breaststroking toward the glimpse of red that kept flashing in front of her, up and down in the waves.

For what seemed like hours, her world narrowed to just water, foam, and the occasional sea weed slapping against and wrapping around her legs. Over and over she had to spit out water and swipe her hair out of her eyes, squinting through streaming eyes. Then there was a flash of red and brown, and then a warm weight slamming into her arm, scrabbling against her.

Much smaller than I expected, she thought, clutching him closer to her. She sucked in a breath that was more foam than air and turned back toward the shore.

The swim back was much shorter but no less freezing. She half swam, half stumbled back onto the shell-covered sand…and only as the weight in her arms gave a bark did she have the presence of mind to realize it wasn't a _child_.

It was a dog.

"Bloody hell," she croaked as it yipped again and wriggled out of her arms, kicking sand into her face as it ran toward the crying woman running toward them. She had just dived into stormy water for a _dog_? "Who in the four bloody hells is _stupid_ enough to bring a dog out here when a storm's brewing–?"

Her eyes landed on the diplomatic insignia on the woman's frilly yellow cloak. With a sinking feeling, she realized: Oh. A Nehelenian, that's who.

L

The news of Rei's escapade traveled faster than Rei did. A servant girl was waiting in her room when Rei dragged herself over the windowsill. "His Majesty requests that Your Highness change into something appropriate and come to his audience chamber, Princess."

Feeling as though she might throw up, Rei sat down mechanically, letting the servant dry out and comb her hair as best as she could and help her into a new gown. She tried to convince herself that she hadn't done anything wrong–well, all right, she had. The Nehelenian ambassador's wife hadn't been at all pleased at being called stupid. But surely Endy would see that saving the woman's dog more than made up for that slip of the tongue? After all, the Nehelenians wouldn't have been very well-disposed toward Elysion if their ambassador's wife's precious puppy was whisked away by its ocean, would they?

But there was still the fact that she had sneaked out of the palace on her own again, Rei thought dully, walking toward the guards who flanked either side of the doors to Endymion's private audience chamber. As one pushed open the doors for her, she bit her lip, lowering her eyes in preparation for Endymion's anger.

But the chamber was quiet. Even as the doors fell quietly shut behind her, there was no sound: not Endymion shifting his weight as he often did when he was angry and wanted to say something about it; not the click of his boots as he rose to his feet to stare her down; and not the intake of breath he usually took before launching into a tirade at her.

Rei risked a peek upward from between her bangs as she curtsied, wobbling a little. Endymion was sitting in his velvet-lined chair upon the dais. Hs elbow was braced against the armrest and his hand against his cheek as he regarded her silently. As she bit her lip again, it seemed to rouse him out of his silence, for his face shifted, first into something like a grimace and then into something like a pained smile. "Quite the morning you've had."

"Ye-es," Rei said slowly, watching him as carefully as he had watched her. "Is the ambassador's wife…pleased?"

His smile flickered into something else, less of a grimace and more of a real smile, a grin like the one he had worn when he was prince and not king. "Pleased is one way to put it." His grin faded into a smile that seemed somehow sad, and he shifted forward in his chair. "Come sit, Rei."

Rei eased herself into one of the chairs that faced his throne. That sad smile had given her a bad feeling. There was something familiar about it, and it only took a moment for her to remember what it was: she had seen him wear that exact expression when they had accidentally lamed one of the horses they had sneaked out and the hostler told him the horse would have to be put down. Why…?

"Rei, what do you know about Andalusia?"

She choked. "You're going to send me away?" Like some disgraced noble girl who'd gotten herself with child out of wedlock and had to be sent to "convalesce" in the country? "Endy, you can't–"

Endymion frowned, and then he was leaning back in his chair again. "Is that so?" he said slowly. "Well, I thought I had finally found the perfect job for you, but I suppose I'll just ask the marchioness…"

_Job?_ Rei's terror gave way to confusion. "Wait! What are you talking about?"

Endymion glanced behind her. Rei turned to follow his gaze and saw the King's Guards who flanked either side of the inside of the door exiting the chamber, closing the heavy doors behind them.

She turned back to face Endymion, her insides tight with excitement. The job he wanted to talk to her about was so secret that he was even having his private guards leave the room?

Her brother had pulled a sealed scroll of parchment from somewhere and now held it, one end resting against his chin. He regarded her intently from over it. His eyes were dark, and Rei had the feeling that he was hesitating, maybe even reconsidering what he had planned to do.

"Endy!" She rocked forward in her chair, nearly tipping over. "You have to tell me! You can't just change your mind now, not when you've already made me so curious!"

"Can't I?" he said, but his tone wasn't taunting, it was thoughtful. Rei held her breath as she watched him finger a silver ring on his thumb.

Abruptly, he straightened and met her eyes squarely. "All right. I won't change my mind. I have an assignment for you in Andalusia, Rei."

Excitement tingled down Rei's spine. An _assignment_. It sounded like the sort of thing Sapphire was in charge of. What would it be, she wondered, spying? Seduction. Assassination?

"It seems that you've probably eavesdropped on enough of our council meetings to know the situation with Nemesis."

Rei had the grace to duck her head guiltily–but only for a moment. "Yes. Tranquisel just fell to them, and now Diamond's planning to–" She faltered here, uncertain of Endymion's reaction, "marry Serenity."

"_Princess _Serenity."

"Y-yes." Rei chewed on her lip, watching him. Even if he convinced the council to declare war on Diamond, the chances of them defeating Diamond before he married Serenity were nonexistent. The chances of defeating Diamond at all were practically nonexistent, in fact, especially if he conscripted Tranquisel and his former brothers' men into his army. If Elysion's alliance with Nehelenia went through, their combined man force would still be little more than half of Nemesis's number. There were other kingdoms on the continent that could possibly be allied with, but they would require gold, lots of gold, as those kingdoms shared no borders with Nemesis and would not consider it a threat to their own sovereignty. Furthermore, they were all fairly small, too small for their individual armies to make much difference against Nemesis.

The only other kingdom sharing a border with Menelay that might possibly have any real manpower to offer was Andalusia, a mostly desert kingdom to the south of Elysion. Its population was smaller than Elysion's, its barbaric people spread out in bands, but they were said to be all the better warriors for their tribal nature, for they were constantly defending their lands from one another. If these flea-bitten camel herders could be brought together to fight, they would be a force to be reckoned with.

But the Andalusian king–he wasn't even a king, really, Rei thought scornfully, just a regent whose family had been in power for a very long time–was an infamous drunkard, barely aware of what time of day it was, much less the state of his own kingdom and the others around it. Persuading such a man into an alliance would be nigh on impossible, and the country was too backward to have a council like Elysion did. She couldn't even remember the last time an Andalusian representative had been in the Elysian court.

She refocused her gaze upon Endymion, remembering now the sun symbol that had been on the parchment Chad had given him. "What do we need Andalusia for?"

Endymion pursed his lips. "There is an underground power network in place there to work around the king. They are trying to organize forces to fend off an attack from Nemesis should Diamond turn his attentions upon them. They have agreed to an alliance with us for the time being. Its leader and I have discussed our mutual needs, and these–" He tapped the scroll against his armrest, "are the instructions for which he has been waiting."

Rei looked from the scroll to him. "So I'm to be a courier?"

Endymion extended the scroll to her and waited until her fingers closed around it before leaning back in his seat. His eyes were on his steepled fingers as he spoke. "Yes. You will attend the king's birthday celebration, ostensibly as a representative of the Elysian court to show the goodwill between his court and ours. Our contact there has been told to expect you, and he will contact you while you are at the celebration."

"So I just give him the scroll." Rei was beginning to feel a little disappointed: it sounded like all she was going to do was have to wear an uncomfortable ball gown and hand some random man a bit of paper. Not exactly the exciting "mission" she had been hoping for.

"I expect you to do a bit more than that," Endymion said. "The man to whom you give this message may have a task he needs you to carry out while you are in Andalusia. Anything he requests of you, you must do." His eyes lifted from his fingers and bored into hers. "Do you understand me, Rei?"

Rei perked up. _This_ was more like it. "Yes, but what if–"

He closed his eyes, wearing the same tired expression he had when he put his face in his hands in her room three weeks ago. "Rei. I do not have time for your curiosity right now. Those are your orders, can you follow them, yes or no?"

"Yes," Rei said immediately, suitably chastised. Endymion had a lot of things on his mind, not the least of which was losing of the girl he had always thought he was going to marry. "I won't let you down, Endy. I swear!"

She sprang to her feet, her mind already working furiously, imagining the sorts of adventures she would have, how she would slip the scroll to the scarfed Andalusian without anyone noticing, not even him; he would simply put a hand to his pocket one moment and realize that there was a scroll there–

"Rei."

Rei halted, blinking. She turned to face him and, seeing how far away he was, realized that she was already halfway to the door.

"Are you forgetting something?"

"Oh!" Rei sketched a hasty curtsy.

Endymion laughed wearily. "That's not what I meant. How are you going to know who to give the message to?" As Rei blinked and flushed in embarrassment, he pulled a second sealed bit of parchment from within his tunic and handed it to her. "Wait until you are on your way there to open it."

"I will," she promised fervently, stuffing both pieces of parchment deep into her wide sleeve. Oh, she was so excited! She swooped down on him and gave him a fierce hug, like the ones she had given him before their father died, before spinning toward the door.

"Wait." He pushed away from his throne suddenly, coming down the dais steps to catch her arm. "Rei. I…"

"What?" Rei said eagerly, searching his face.

Endymion's eyes darkened. He sat back down, shaking his head. "Nothing. Just–take care."

Rei grinned at him. She knew what he'd been about to say, and it didn't bother her at all that he'd lost his nerve at the last minute. He loved her. She had been doubting that fact lately, but now she felt stupid, guilty even, to have doubted him. Of course he loved her. He was her brother, after all.

With one last curtsy, she skipped from the room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Title:** Enthroned

**Chapter**: 3

**Date:** 6.12.11

**Disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

**Author's Notes:** Thanks to everyone for the feedback! Lots of love and thanks to Jade!

To Daydreamishly, the LnL sequel is definitely still in the works! It's just that every time I start working on it, I feel guilty about writing it instead of STC, so I stop and work on STC instead. Since this story is kind of already done, it takes less time to finish up chapters and post, so I don't feel as bad working on it.

L

The journey to Andalusia was less exciting than Rei had imagined.

For one thing, it was terribly hot. Having spent her whole life next to the sea, where there was always a breeze blowing your hair into your eyes, Rei had never realized that it was possible for air to be so _still._ Traveling across the hot, hilly farmland east of the coast, where the only relief from the sun came from the handful of oak trees that hadn't been chopped down to make room for more fields, was like being trapped inside a sauna. A sheen of sweat continuously covered Rei's body, making her traveling dresses stick to her as stubbornly and uncomfortably as sand to wet skin.

As they got closer to Elysion's border with Andalusia, the farmland giving way to scrub and then to full-on desert, the humidity evaporated, and tiny breezes began to kick up now and then. But Rei was prevented from enjoying even this reprieve, as Luna insisted that it was not lady-like to ride astride a horse; they must stay inside the stuffy carriage.

Luna was the other reason the journey fell short of Rei's expectations. It had never occurred to her that Endy would send the uptight noblewoman along with her; she had thought she would go alone with an escort of royal guards and a servant or perhaps two. Instead, when she woke the day of her departure six days ago to Luna's impatient, "Wake up, Princess, we are already late!" she found Luna wearing a brand-new traveling gown.

"Surely you didn't think His Majesty was sending you without supervision?" Luna had said impatiently at Rei's yowl of protest. "We are already on war's doorstep with three other countries; we can hardly afford for your deplorable lack of political finesse to antagonize Andalusia's king against us as well! I will be accompanying you to make sure you don't stick your foot in our collective mouth."

To that end, she had spent the entirety of the journey drilling Rei on Andalusian customs and culture – "though it is perhaps a stretch to call it culture," she had sniffed, for everyone knew the Andalusians were, for the most part, barbarians. Even the Nemisians lived in houses, at least; most Andalusians wandered across the desert living in tents.

Today, the day before they were due to reach the Andalusian palace, Luna was quizzing Rei on how to properly address Andalusia's various levels of officials. "No, no, no!" she was saying now in response to Rei's latest response, her nostrils flaring. "The king's vizier is to be addressed as Your Excellency! The title of 'Your Honor' is only used for village judges – to use it to address the vizier would be a grave insult!"

Rei peeled her sweaty hair from the back of her neck. She was wearing it in a delicately woven, pearl-studded net that was supposed to keep her long hair out of her face but just ended up leaving it in a heavy mass atop her neck. "Sorry, Luna," she mumbled, for what had to be the fifteenth time that day. She no longer even had the energy to make a cheeky response.

Luna sighed a bit tiredly herself and sat back in her cushion, dabbing her glistening neck with a filmy handkerchief. It was a little strange to see her sweating and looking uncomfortable like a real human being; Rei was so used to seeing her unfailingly composed, like a life-sized version of the porcelain dolls they made in Nehelene.

"All right," the older woman said. "One more, and if you get it right, we can stop."

Rei sighed, unexcited. The chances of her giving the right answer were about as great as a thunderstorm suddenly appearing and drenching them in beautiful, delicious rain. "All right."

"How is the Andalusian king to be addressed?"

Rei perked up. She knew _that_ one, if only because it was so ridiculously pompous for a man who wasn't even of true royal blood. "Lord of Kentak, Emperor of Muhassin, Head of House Itto, One and Only True King…" She took a pause to drag in a deep breath and also to snicker, "of Andalusia, His Most Exalted and Benevolent Highness Assan al-Numa."

She waited eagerly for Luna to confirm that she was right – but before Luna could say anything, shouts erupted outside the carriage.

Luna seized Rei's arm in fear. She whimpered as the carriage lurched to a stop.

Rei's heart and mind raced. At least one of the shouts had been Andalusian, a guttural cry. Warrior tribes roamed the Andalusian desert, especially its borders, unchecked by their ineffective kind; that was why Endy had sent not just two but _eight_ guards with Rei. Had they been found by one of these tribes? With Luna still clinging to her arm, Rei pulled a bit of the carriage window's curtains aside, peering out.

She had to squint against the fierce late afternoon glare, but she saw that the carriage, and the mounted Elysian guards that encircled it in a loose formation, had in turn been surrounded by a group of Andalusians astride beastly creatures that looked like malformed horses. She recognized them from the drawing in one of the palace library's scrolls: camels. Some of these men had knives in their hands, resting along their legs, and that gave her the courage to twitch the curtain open a little wider.

One of the Andalusians was riding a fine, tall stallion, not a camel, and he slid down from it as Rei's chief guard (she did not know him by name, only by the blue badge of command he wore at his chest) did the same.

The Andalusian was dark, like most Andalusians were, his skin the color of wet sand. His hair was dark and reddish, like dried blood, and he wore wide, flowing trousers and a surcoat. He was smiling, metal glinting on the side of his nose and in his smile. He said something to her guard, inclining his head and handing him something as he did so.

Rei could only see her guard's back, but something about his shoulders seemed to relax as he took the object from the Andalusian. Suddenly, the memory of her father telling Endymion that danger came from within one's own ranks jumped into Rei's mind. Like a minnow, it nipped at her – suppose the object the Andalusian had handed her guards was money? Suppose her guards had betrayed her, had been bought off to hand her over to some Andalusian warlord so he could hold her ransom?

"Luna," she said under her breath, easing the carriage door open. "Come on."

"Princess!" Luna whispered back, and Rei turned to hiss at her to be quiet. But the men, both Andalusian and her own, had turned toward them. Her chief guard and the head Andalusian stepped toward her.

"Your Royal Highness!" exclaimed the latter. His Elysian was nearly flawless; only a ghost of the guttural Andalusian accent touched his consonants. "We are honored by your arrival in our humble country!"

Rei narrowed her eyes as he stopped before her and sank into an Andalusian-style bow, his knees and palms flat to the ground and his head bowed. It would be very easy to kick him while he was in that position, but even if she did incapacitate him, there were still his men – and possibly her own guards – to contend with.

So she just stepped to the side so that she was shielding Luna and gritted out, "What do you want?"

The white-clad Andalusian blinked, revealing that his eyelids were painted red beneath his pierced brows. "I–"

"Before you answer," she continued, taking a step toward him, "know that my brother will have you fed to sharks if you dare to touch so much as a hair on my head. In fact, he will string you up in a pool of jellyfish, wait until they have stung you beyond recognition, expose you to the gulls for your soft parts to be pecked away, and _then_ give the sharks your remains."

The Andalusian blinked. Again. His lips rolled up, then in, as though he were about to smile and suppressed it, and then he lifted his hands, palm up. "I think there has been a misunderstanding, Your Highness. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Kentar al-Mikai, First Steward to the Lord of Kentak, Emperor of Muhassin, Head of House Itto, One and Only True King of Andalusia, His Most Exalted and Benevolent Highness Assan al-Numa."

Rei's face had gone progressively paler as the litany of titles progressed, and now she was white as Luna's petticoat. "Oh. _Oh._"

Luna stepped around Rei. "Our deepest apologies, Lord Steward." Her hand still gripped Rei's tightly. "I implore you to take no offense at our reaction. Surely you can understand how, based on our knowledge of the unrest in Andalusia's borderlands, your sudden appearance made us jump to an unsavory conclusion–"

The steward lifted his hand to stop her. "No offense is taken, my lady. The unsavory elements in our borderlands worry us as much as they do you, and that is precisely the reason His Majesty send me with a guard to escort you."

Luna's hand twitched a little in Rei's. "I had not thought we were such important guests as to merit an honor guard."

"Then you have underestimated Andalusian hospitality, my lady, and for that I _am_ insulted." With a smile, the steward brushed a kiss across Luna's knuckles, not taking his eyes from hers. And Rei saw Luna do something she hadn't thought the prickly governess capable of – blushing.

The steward's eyes returned to Rei's, then, and they were serious. "Do we have Her Highness's permission to escort her to His Majesty's palace?" He let the hint of a smile soften his serious expression. "I hope we do, for although his kingdom is not blessed with jellyfish, our king would have us fed to camels if we left one of his honored guests to the mercies of the borderlands."

Rei forced a smile and mumbled an assent. Her face was hot; she was more embarrassed than she could remember ever having been in her life, even more than the time Sapphire witnessed Luna scolding her for leaving her worn petticoat and underthings on the floor in her room. What would Endymion say if he found out about this?

"I thought camels weren't carnivorous," said Luna, thankfully directing the steward's attention away from Rei.

"I wish you would tell ours that," he said, holding up a hand to show a half-healed bite mark on his knuckle and gesturing behind him at the group of camels strung together behind the Andalusians' horses.

He dismissed himself, then, returning to his own horse, and Rei's chief guard assisted her and Luna back up into their carriage. He did not meet Rei's eyes as he lifted her up, and nor did she meet his. On top of the embarrassment, she had a terrible feeling that she wasn't used to feeling toward anyone but Endy – a feeling like she had done something _wrong_. Like she should apologize.

But that was ridiculous. What was she supposed to have thought, when she saw her head guard taking something from a strange foreigner? It wasn't as though she knew him, or any of her guards, well enough to trust that they wouldn't betray her for some gold. Furthermore, it wasn't her _job_ to know her guards that well; they were common men, and she was a princess. She nodded her head decisively to herself. She had done absolutely nothing wrong by reacting the way she had…except maybe the bit where she threatened to have the Andalusian king's chief steward fed to sharks.

She made a sound of dismay, pressing her hands over her eyes as though she could push the memory of her foolishness out of her head. A hand touched her shoulder once, carefully, then patted it, and she looked out between her fingers to see that Luna – Luna! – was wearing a sympathetic expression.

"I thought they were bandits, too," she said softly, and the way she was biting her lip as she looked out the window made her look younger, suddenly, and Rei, remembering the way she had flushed when the steward kissed her hand, also remembered that even though Luna was older than her, it was actually only by a few years. She couldn't be much more than twenty or twenty-one, like the laughing, flirting noblewomen's daughters in Endy's throne room who were usually already engaged.

"Thank you," Luna said, still quietly.

Rei blinked, pulled from her realization. "For what?"

Luna met her eyes. "For when we thought they were – well, bandits, you put yourself in front of me. Although–" She paused and straightened up, her face hardening into a much more Luna-like expression as she began her usual that-was-not-proper-princess-behavior bristle, "you should not have done so, as the princess's life is more important than that of her lady in waiting!"

Rei made a face, more in response to Luna's scolding tone than anything. Then, after a minute of silence, she said uncertainly, "Do you know the men my brother assigned to guard us?"

Instead of Luna tsk-ing that of course a nobleman's daughter like her did not know lowly _guards_, her face fell into that young, vulnerable expression again. "To be honest, Princess, I do not. I recognize none of them from the palace training yards."

"Same," Rei said. And she knew most of the palace guards by sight, thanks to Chad. The only ones she didn't know… Ah! She perked up. The only ones she didn't know by sight were the King's Own guards who attended her brother, for they wore helmets and masks that concealed their identities. Probably Endy had taken some of them off King's Own duty to guard her on this all-important espionage mission!

She reached out impulsively and grabbed Luna's cold hand. "I think that we are important enough guests for an honor guard after all, Luna."

Luna gave her a strange look that clearly asked what she was on about, but Rei only grinned and shook her head, unfolding the blanket on the bench beside her and spreading it over herself to catch some sleep before they reached the Andalusian palace.

L

They must have arrived there sometime while she was sleeping, for one moment Rei was drowsily watching the small square of dusky sky in the bouncing carriage, and the next she was sitting up in a pitch-black room lit only by two fat candles.

Before she could panic – _not_ that she would have – Luna sat forward, out of the dancing shadows. "Princess."

Rei rubbed her eyes, as though it would make it easier to see in the darkness. "Where are we?"

"In the…palace. The Lord Steward carried you indoors himself when we arrived. They were loath to wake you."

Rei did not miss the delicate disdain in Luna's voice as she said "palace," which this place most certainly did not qualify as. She wrinkled her nose herself, looking around, squinting to try to see through the darkness. She had heard that the Andalusians were nomadic, pitching tents while they traveled, and living in strongholds carved out of the al-And mountains when they were not traveling, but she had thought the king, at least, would have a proper residence. Clearly she had been mistaken.

"I imagine you're rather desperate for a bath," Luna said, and Rei became abruptly aware of how stiff and grimy she felt. There was gritty sand in her hair and a few other uncomfortable places. It wasn't so unlike she usually felt after a few hours spent on the beach except that she felt so terribly _dry._

"My kingdom for a bath," she said dramatically, and she saw an almost-smile curve Luna's lips for a second before disappearing. It was only the deep, dramatic shadows cast by the candlelight that let her see it; otherwise she probably would have missed the subtle, fleeting smile.

They were, Rei found, housed in the guest wing of the cave-composed residence. Outside her suite of rooms, each of which were lit only by a faintly luminescent lichen with candles waiting to be lit beside them, was a long, much better-lit but cramped hallway with wall sconces every few feet. A young Andalusian girl waited outside the room and led them quietly down the hallway to an echoing, cavernous room. It was somehow lighter, and Rei, blinking as her eyes slowly adjusted, realized that the cavern was not really a cavern but rather was the bottom of a very deep canyon, a strip of blue sky just visible far, far above them between the walls of rock that rose up around them. The canyon must have been cut through the stone by some tremendous river, of which now there only remained what filled the huge space the servant had led them into. Its water glowed faintly, a beautiful, almost ghostly blue the likes of which Rei had never seen before, even when she and Endy once came across a jellyfish stuck in a tide pool one night when they had sneaked out of the castle. It had made the water glow in the darkness, but not as brightly as this.

"Is it…safe?" she asked Luna as the servant girl motioned Rei toward a slightly more private bathing pool that had been created by carving a channel to the river. A stack of towels and bathing supplies sat beside it.

"The Lord Stewart assured me it was." Luna pinched the skin on her own arm. "I bathed in it, and I have not begun to glow yet, if that is any reassurance."

"In that case…" Rei began to unbutton her dress, then remembered that she was supposed to be acting _properly_. She lowered her hands to her side and motioned airily to the servant girl to begin undressing her. She finished quickly and stepped back, allowing Rei to step to the lip of the pool.

Rei felt a pang of homesickness as she lowered first her foot, then the rest of her body, into the pool. Its water was softer than Elysion's salt- and sand-laced sea water, and colder, too, and it made her miss her own water, her own ocean. Her bright, open palace, her high, airy room.

Her grumpy, loving brother.

The pool was deep, its surface level with her shoulders when she stood with her feet on the hard stone bottom. She went under, scrubbing her face and then her scalp with her fingers. Then she came up, her stinging eyes now properly camouflaged, and perched on the lip carved midway up the pool's wall so that the servant girl could begin to rub soap into her hair.

L

Kentar al-Mikai was waiting outside their rooms when they returned from the baths. Rei was fully dressed in a day gown, and her skin had been scrubbed so hard she felt like she _was_ glowing, but she felt like a grimy little idiot again as soon as she saw him standing there. How _stupid_ she had been!

But she jutted her chin up and out like the princess she was (and would act like if it killed her!), eyeing him expectantly as he swept into a bow, Elysian-style this time, before her.

"Your Highness," he said, and when he straightened again, his eyes were dancing as though to remind her of their encounter the day before. She lifted her chin higher, willing herself not to flush with shame. Perhaps in all these stupid shadows her blush wouldn't be visible. "The king extends his pleasure at your arrival and bids me ask you to save him a dance at the celebration tonight."

Tonight? Rei's eyes widened. For the first time since they had encountered Kentar and his men, she remembered why she had come to Andalusia. Endy's message!

"Luna!" She spun, grabbing the woman's sleeve. "My dress, the one I was wearing – where is it?"

Luna regarded her, her expression a mixture of curiosity and disapproval. "The servant took it to be washed, Princess. What is the problem?"

"I – I forgot something in it! I need it!"

Luna pursed her lips and sighed. "I'm sure you can live a few hours without it, Your Highness – "

"No!" What if she encountered her contact before then? She couldn't give him the scroll if it was hidden in a secret sleeve pocket in a dress _she didn't have_. Not to mention that it would be ruined if the dress was washed before she could get the scroll out! And even worse, what if someone noticed the lump in the dress's sleeve and found the scroll themselves? "I need it _now_!"

She tried to infuse her voice with royal authority. Instead, Luna and Kentar exchanged looks above her head as though they were dealing with a child throwing a tantrum. Rei flushed.

Soothingly, Kentar said, "Peace, Princess. I will find the dress and have it returned to you immediately."

"In the meantime," Luna said, her lips pursed in a way that said she did not approve of Rei's insistence, "we must begin preparing you for this evening."

Rei took a deep breath. "Luna," she said, more calmly and, she thought, regally. "It is only morning. There is plenty of time."

Luna's face softened, as though she noticed and appreciated Rei's effort at decorum. "But it isn't morning, Princess. You slept well into the afternoon."

Behind her came a sound like a muffled chuckle. Rei stiffened, her neck hot, but did not turn to look at Kentar. First Steward he may be, she thought in outrage, but that does not give him the right to laugh at a princess. She didn't feel bad any longer about having threatened to have him fed to the sharks. He was as bad as the council members back home, laughing at her brother behind his back! Her fists clenched. Non-royals needed to learn their place!

"I wish my gown returned immediately," she said, voice hard again. "_Un_touched. Or I will let the king know my displeasure."

She swept into her suite.

L

The servant girl who had attended Rei in the bath appeared a scant five minutes after Kentar left, holding Rei's neatly-folded dress, and fairly crying apologies in broken Elysian. Rei took it and dismissed the girl with an impatient wave, then fairly dived back into her innermost chamber and fumbling through the voluminous sleeves of the dress for the hidden pocket. The scroll was there, sending a wave of relief through her madly racing veins, and she managed to shove it into her slip just as Luna slipped through the curtain that separated Rei's chamber from the outer suite.

Two hours, three corset re-lacings, and an eternity of torture later, Rei was dressed in her pearl-stitched ball gown and being led by a footman through the twisting halls. Luna followed a few steps behind, as etiquette dictated for a lady-in-waiting, and before and behind them, other nobles were making their way to the celebration. Rei lost track of all the twists and turns they took through the dark, cramped tunnels. Honestly, weren't the Andalusian ashamed to house royals in this shabby place?

Eventually the tunnel they were in widened out, and the mouth of a huge cavern, no doubt the ballroom, or what passed for one in this hole, became visible. Rei remembered from Luna's instructions that they would now wait in the reception line to be formally presented to the king. Rei shifted surreptitiously, already feeling her diamond-stitched slippers begin to pinch, and wondered how lady-like it would be to crane her neck to try to see into the ballroom. Would she recognize her contact when she saw him? Was he already inside? Had he already seen her?

Kentar al-Mikai suddenly appeared at her elbow, dressed in the loose, almost informal clothing the Andalusians favored so much. A gold streak had been dyed in his dark red hair, and some of the metal hoops in his ears and brow had been exchanged for ruby studs.

His single gold canine gleamed as he smiled and presented his arm to her. "His Exalted Majesty is most eager to make your acquaintance, Princess." Without waiting for a reply, he led her forward, the crowd parting before him. They were nobles, all of the members of the crowd, waiting to be presented to the king in their jewel-stitched finery, and their eyes were all on her as Kentar led her toward the ballroom's entrance. Rei had to swallow; it was less exhilarating than she had thought it would be, the weight of all those eyes on her, some admiring, some disdainful, all curious. She suddenly wished she hadn't eaten all that buttery flatbread a kitchen servant had presented with her and Luna's tea an hour ago.

Then they were inside the ballroom, and it was simultaneously more and less than she had expected. It was huge not only from side to side but upward: its ceiling stretched so high above them that she could not make out much more than darkness; only the parts where huge slabs of rock seemed to drip down from the ceiling were any hint that there was a ceiling at all. Some of these slabs of rock glittered with veins of gold, catching the light from the fireplaces set at various intervals along the wall, and the same glitter shown in the dark rock of the walls that stretched up above them. It was a fevered, heady appearance for Rei, who was used to the coolly gleaming mother-of-pearl walls of her brother's palace, not hot glitter that winked and snatched at her eyes, making her blink.

But for all of that glittering splendor, the ball room was also primitive. The main sources of light were the sooty fires and strange patches of light that glowed on the rock walls themselves – they looked like some sort of _lichen_, Rei realized in awe and a little disgust. The uneven placement of the fires around the room – too many, and it would be choked with smoke even though there seemed to be ventilation carrying the majority of it up out of the cavern – made the spots directly near them feel uncomfortably hot, like ovens, and the spots farther from them were chilly, untouched by the fires' warmth. The nobles present were alternating between shivering and sweating in their delicate silks, and, beginning to sweat herself in her delicate gown, Rei found herself looking balefully at Kentar, who seemed perfectly comfortable in his flowing trousers and tunic.

The steward's arm suddenly dropped from under hers, though, and Rei yanked her attention ahead, realizing that during her study of the ball room, Kentar had led them to the head of the presentation line, directly before the king's dais.

Distantly, she heard a voice announce, "Her Royal Highness the Princess Rei Belledawn of Elysion." But it was only distantly, for her attention was on the man who sprawled in the throne before her, dangling his arms over the armrests.

He wore the same loose tunic and breeches as Kentar and the other Andalusians in the ballroom, but his were stitched with gold. He fairly dripped gold; it glinted on his fingers, at his neck, on the shells of his ears. A few studs even dotted the skin above one of his eyebrows, which were half hidden by messy, sun-bleached hair.

This was Andalusia's King Assan al-Numa.

He was actually younger than Endy, Rei knew, but looking at him now, she would have thought he was ten years older. There were lines carved at the corners of his mouth and dark-circled eyes, and his hands trembled like an old man's as he put them on his armrests to push himself out of his throne and walk down the dais's steps to her.

"Princess," he said in halting Elysian. He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, not taking his eyes from hers. His were bright blue, almost the color of the glowing bathing pool, but the whites looked dirty, yellowed, and the smell of wine wafted from his mouth to her nose as he hiccoughed after kissing her hand. "At last we – _hic_ – meet."

Rei withdrew her hand from his. Her jangling nerves had gone quite calm. What did she have to fear from a man who couldn't stay sober even an hour into a celebration attended by numerous important dignitaries? This man was a fool, and she would take pleasure in helping the subjects who were working to overthrow him.

"The pleasure is all mine, Your Majesty," she said clearly, and took a step back to curtsy. "I wish you many happy returns of this joyous occasion." She curtsied again and took a step back to leave.

Assan caught her arm. "Wait." Again the smell of wine washed into Rei's nose as he stepped closer, letting his hand slide up her arm to her shoulder, which her gown left bare. "You promised me a dance."

Rei stiffened. Her skin had puckered uncomfortably at his touch; she felt flushed and hot. She was a princess, and this drunken idiot was pawing at her like she was a scullery maid he could take to bed!

Her brother would never stand for her to be thus treated. She stepped swiftly backward, snatching her shoulder out of Assan's reach. "You forget yourself, King," she hissed so lowly that only he could hear. Then she spun and clipped away from the throne in her diamond-stitched slippers.

L

"Shit," he muttered beneath his breath.

His accomplice bent closer to hear him. "Sir?"

"What the hell does she think she's doing?"

The other shrugged, his eyes following the black-haired girl as she trotted angrily through the knots of people, away from the king. "Your guess is as good as mine."

"Well." He drained a goblet and shoved to his feet. "Let's pray she hasn't just ruined everything."


	4. Chapter 4

**Title:** Enthroned

**Chapter**: 4

**Date:** 6.18.11

**Disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

L

Three hours into the party, Rei was beginning to sweat inside her whalebone corset. Since her "_unbelievable_ conduct" with the king (Luna's tearful words, not hers), Rei had circulated through the ballroom, sat for long periods at a table in plain sight near the buffet, and even lingered near doorways leading out of this cavern of a ballroom.

Yet there had still been _no sign of her contact._

A few young men had come to ask her to dance, and each time Rei had waited with pounding heart for them to speak the arranged coded exchange about her slippers. But each time, she was disappointed, as they spoke little more than pleasantries and flirtations – and even veiled insults, in the case of the dark-haired Nehelenian whose voice dripped sarcasm every time he called her "Princess."

So now she had retreated to a fairly dim corner of the room, partly hidden by the shadow of one of the huge down-drippings of rock that hung from the ceiling far above. It was chilly there, in a spot away from any of the fireplaces, yet she still sweated nervously. She patted surreptitiously at the front of her dress, worried that the scroll nestled inside her slip would be ruined as effectively as it would have been had the servant girl put it in the wash.

She felt gazes on her again, and pulled her hand down immediately. Lifting her chin and pretending she was studying the gold veins glinting in the rock hanging above her, she actually glanced around the room – and almost immediately met the gaze of the Andalusian king. His eyes were glazed, a cup held to his mouth, but somehow the glassiness of that steady gaze was all the more unsettling.

Rei tore her stare from his, looking around at the other people in the ballroom to see if they had noticed. They had; she saw noblewomen watching her with their painted eyes, murmuring to each other behind their fans, and noblemen speaking out of the corners of disdainfully curled mouths. Knowing she was the object of their stares and their conversation was like being back in Elysion all over again, with the courtiers who didn't bow as deeply to her as they would to a real princess and the noble-born girls her age who snickered behind their hands when she walked past and the etiquette masters who had not let her stand with her brother the king at their father's funeral.

And the familiarity gave her a feeling worse than homesickness. A feeling like she didn't have anywhere to be homesick _for_, because she didn't really _belong_ anywhere.

Heat stung her eyes, and she spun to find a way out of the ballroom, to a hallway, a water closet, anything.

Instead she ran into something solid.

"Careful," said a voice in her ear. Its breath was sour; she immediately recognized the smell. The king. He was holding her waist with both hands, and not gently. His face smiled, but that grip was angry, and so was his voice, as he spoke through his teeth to her. "You are ready for our dance now?"

The moisture that had spring to Rei's eyes a moment before evaporated. "Un. Hand. Me." Her voice was the quiet, threatening one that Endymion had used on her three weeks prior.

Around them, eyes watched, burning into them. Assan released her.

Rei didn't step back. She stared him down instead, her eyes boring into his yellowed ones. The air between them seemed almost to waver with the rage they were directing at each other.

Then he smiled confidently, sifted his hand through the curtain of hair hanging down her back, and slipped back into the crowd.

The audacity – and the _intimacy_ left Rei frozen. When her mind was able to function again, her first thought was of Endy. What would he say? Bad enough that she had failed in the mission she had given her, but how much worse to have let a dirty-blooded king treat her like some common wench!

A sick feeling, of guilty, of shame, of dirtiness, filled her. She slunk from the glittering cavern, hating Assan al-Numa and hating herself, too.

L

The Elysian princess had been assigned quarters in the western wing of the _taddart_. These quarters had been chosen specially for their proximity to the bathing _ifran_; the king, or his steward, had thought she might be more comfortable closer to water, different as it was from that of her homeland.

It was a decision he wished had not been made, for while the quarters were close to the bathing _ifran_, they were more than half the _taddart_'s length away from the stables. The distance doubled the chances that they would be caught by her guards – or someone else – on the way from her quarters to the horses waiting for them.

His best hope was that she would cooperate, but based on her behavior thus far that night, that hope was a slim one.

He adjusted the dark hood around his face again, making sure the bit over his mouth and nose were secure. The corridors he padded through in his soft-soled boots were pitch-black; he had made sure that all the wall sconces save the one before the princess's door were extinguished once the last of the birthday celebration guests had trickled back to their quarters (or someone else's, he thought, thinking of the giggle and moan he had heard as he passed one room the door of which had imprudently not been closed all the way), but the Elysian guards were not fools; they would have a torch. The ones set to guard the princess tonight should be asleep at their posts, thanks to some powder slipped into the tea offered them compliments of the king by a servant an hour earlier, but as leader of the resistance, he preferred to be thorough.

Midway through his next step be he went still. His ears strained beneath his hood. He could have sworn he had heard a sound from _behind_ him, and Mikai was supposed to be _ahead_ of him…

But still as he stayed for a whole minute, he heard nothing more, and so he crept forward again, moving through the pitch blackness only by his sheer familiarity with the corridors. When he saw light flickering from the next curve of corridor, he knew he had found the princess's door. From the regular flickering of the shadows, devoid of larger, dark ones, and the absence of voices, he knew the tea had done its job.

Sure enough, he slid around the curve and saw the two guards slumped on either side of the door. He glanced to his left and saw Mikai's eyes and familiar piercings glinting from just outside the dancing circle of firelight from the sconce.

Mikai lifted a hand with two fingers out: all-clear.

He splayed a hand carefully across the stone door and pushed it open.

His first thought was, _Stupid Elysians_. Instead of using the glowing _sufu_ lichen, they had left candles burning in the outer chamber, despite the warning he knew his steward had given to the lady's maid, the dark-haired one with the narrow lips, about how they could eat up the air in a room in only an hour.

His heart began to thud hard in his chest as he moved silently to the doorway to the inner chamber, wondering if they had left candles burning there, too, if he would duck through the curtain only to find the princess suffocated, dead, all his plans laid to waste…

But he did not find a dead princess lying on the bed of rugs. Instead he found _no_ princess lying on the bed of rugs.

His thudding heartbeat turned into a deafening pound in his ears. His head swung from side to side, searching the whole room, but there was no one in the lichen-lit room at all, only the mussed blankets.

He darted back out into the outer room, but only the lady's maid slept there: no princess hidden in the shadows from the candles. He extinguished them with an angry sweep of his trembling arm and burst out into the corridor.

"She's not there!" he hissed to Mikai. But even as he spoke he remembered the faint sound he had heard from behind him in the corridor minutes ago, and he swung around to look that way – just in time to see a pair of dark, wide eyes gleaming out at him from just outside the circle of light cast by the torch on the wall.

"There!" he snapped in Andalusian and leapt at the girl. He grabbed her by the arms as she tried to run away, then by the waist as Mikai caught up and seized her arms. Together, they began to drag her down the corridor toward the stables. By then she was crying out for her guards, and he became distantly aware of himself hissing, "Sshh! _Sshh_!"

"Luna! _Luna! Guards_!" she screamed in Elysian.

He swore and yanked her so roughly that she stumbled to her knees. Cursing himself for not having the lady's maid drugged as well, he took the opportunity to slap a hand over her mouth, pressing it there so hard he could feel the outline of her teeth through her skin.

It was none too soon, for from behind them there was the sound of doors opening and uncertain footsteps clicking on the stone. "Princess? Princess!"

Without waiting to be ordered, Mikai swung the princess from the ground and over his shoulder, then broke into a run. He followed suit, one hand clenched in the fabric over his burning chest and the other scrabbling to find the pressure point in the princess's neck so he could knock her unconscious and stop her screaming.

Then suddenly they were bursting out into cold air and grey dawn light. The dark shapes of horses and men waited for them. He scrambled onto his own mount just in time to catch the princess as Mikai slung her onto its back. With her back mashed against his ribs, he felt, rather than heard, her sucking in a breath for another scream, and he covered her mouth with his hand just in time.

He hadn't placed his hand properly; she bit down on the fleshy part between his thumb and finger. He hissed but didn't remove his hand, just dug his knees into Amazigh. The stallion broke into a gallop, then a run, and on either side of them, Mikai and the rest of their small company followed suit.

Despite the cold air of just-before-dawn, he was sweating, his nerves made all the worse by the sound of shouting from behind him.

"Her guards are coming," Mikai shouted, barely audible over the sound of hooves and the blood roaring in his ears. "They're gaining on us!"

For a minute he went stiff with indecision as he leaned forward, jaw clenched, and then, with a rush of decision and fury, fury at the princess still thrashing in his hold, he threw up his free hand with four fingers extended, then motioned it backward, behind him.

Fluidly, four men – men he trusted, men he had helped train, men who were not much more than boys–peeled off from the line of horses and rode back in the direction they had come, toward the approaching Elysians.

As the sound of metal striking metal reached his ears, he took the hand from the princess's mouth and dug his thumb into the base of her skull before she could scream again. She went immediately, gracelessly limp.

Behind him, men began to scream.

L

Rei woke up on a rug. A thick, woven rug that was sandy against her face.

She sat up, brushing sand from the side of her face, and realized that not only were the rug and her face sandy, but so was the floor. She was in a tent pitched on top of sand, the cloth walls around her rippling as they were hit by little gusts of dusk wind. She could tell it was dusk from the bit of purple-orange sky she could see through gaps as the bottom of the tent was sometimes blown up, away from the ground, and from the way she felt chilled, not hot.

Outside the tent, men were speaking in Andalusian. They couldn't be more than three feet away, from the closeness of their voices, and the knowledge that her kidnappers were so close made Rei's fingertips even colder with fear. How horribly hilarious, she told herself, that she had humiliated herself on the way to Andalusia by seeing kidnapping attempts where there weren't any, and now she really _had_ been kidnapped.

The laugh that she tried to push out was really more of the beginning of a sob. The voices outside stopped, and she put a fist over her mouth, trying to swallow back the tears. She heard crunching in the sand, as though one of the men outside had gotten up. Immediately she looked around. The only thing in the tent, aside from the rug and herself, was a pile of saddlebags that had been dropped next to the rug. The flaps of one of them, probably the one the rug had been taken out of, was open. Something gleamed inside it. Crawling silently toward it, Rei reached inside and lifted it. It was a heavy gold container a bit like a vase or a lamp; it made her think of an Andalusian story she'd read once about a genie and an orphan.

Still moving silently, she got to her bare feet – her slippers were still on the rug – and positioned herself beside the tent's entrance flap. She held the heavy lamp above her head, ready to crash down on the head of whomever entered, for she could hear someone stopping in front of the tent's flap…

The head that poked through had gold-streaked red hair. _Kentar, _she thought viciously, and brought the lamp down –

Hands seized her own from behind, trapping her fingers between its own and the lamp so that she couldn't hit Kentar with it.

"Drop it," said a cold voice in accented Elysian. "Gently. It's something of an heirloom."

Rei stared at the hand over her left one. Angry red bite marks stood out on the tan skin between its thumb and pointer finger. _Her_ bite marks.

With a growl, she wrenched around to glower at her kidnapper.

Jaundiced eyes stared back.

"Drop it," said the Lord of Kentak, Emperor of Muhassin, Head of House Itto, One and Only True King of Andalusia, His Most Exalted and Benevolent Highness Assan al-Numa again.

He forced her arms down from where she held them above their heads and dug his fingers into her wrist, pinching the nerves so that the vase fell from her numb fingers. It landed harmlessly on the sand. Rei angrily (and with her pulse thudding in her dry mouth) drew her foot back to kick it, but Assan pinned both her feet with his own, pressing down with his soft leather boot.

"Well, _this_ is much more exciting than we had bargained for." Kentar had ducked the rest of the way through the tent flap and was now gingerly patting down his hair. "We may have ended up with a bigger firebrand than even you can handle, Majesty."

"There is no such thing," Assan said tersely. As if to prove his point, he increased the pressure of his foot on Rei's. She refused to wince, only glowered at him in defiance of the fear knotting her insides. After a moment, he lifted his foot, releasing her. She took an immediate step backward, out of range, snatching her arms back as well and rubbing them where he had gripped them.

He watched her rub feeling back into them. His blue eyes were still yellowed, as they had been when she met him in the ballroom, but their gaze today was clear and sharp, not glazed. And they had none of the hungry, smoldering heat with which he had watched her in the ballroom. Instead, they were cold, and he showed no inclination to touch her or invade her private space as he had before.

Feeling confused, but determined not to show it, she straightened her back, standing proudly. "What do you want from me?"

"No jellyfish speech this time?" Kentar muttered under his breath.

Assan ignored him. "What I want, Your Highness," he said tersely, his faint Andalusian accent giving each word extra stress, "is to know why you were so…" He paused, seeming to choose his word carefully, "uncooperative last night."

"Uncooperative," repeated Rei. "You mean when you _abducted_ me?"

"I mean at my birthday celebration."

Rei was growing more and more confused by the second, and the more confused she felt, the angrier she was becoming. Her eyes flashed. "I'm sorry, Elysian princesses aren't raised to cooperate with barbarian who try to _grope_ them!"

The king pursed his pale lips. "My apologies for that," he said, not sounding sorry at all. "Your Highness, I'm afraid that we may not be on the same page."

"Not even in the same book," Rei muttered, crossing her arms. It made the scroll in her slip crinkle, and she quickly coughed, trying to cover the sound.

"Indeed," he acknowledged, and he looked suddenly very tired, almost like her brother when he had come to her room after the council meeting weeks ago. "Why don't you tell me why your brother sent you to Andalusia?"

Rei glowered at this. "I'm not telling you anything!"

"Let's try this." He cleared his throat. "Those shoes of yours don't look very pleasant for dancing, Princess."

Glancing down at her bare feet, Rei opened her mouth to say scornfully that she wasn't wearing shoes. Then recognition seeped into her. She looked back up slowly, her eyes wide.

The king lifted a brow. "I believe your answer should be something about how you might as well be wearing slippers made of glass?"

It was the coded exchange that was supposed to identify the underground Andalusian contact to Rei. Which meant – her mind leapt to the obvious conclusion – the king had found Rei's contact and tortured it from him. That was why he hadn't found her at the party!

The king saw her expression and took a step forward. Rei automatically took one back. Assan went still, raising his hands as though to indicate he meant no harm.

"I fear you are jumping to the wrong conclusion, Princess," he said quickly. "Your brother warned me about your tendency to jump to conclusions–admittedly, in this case, it is the obvious conclusion to jump to. But the only reason I knew what you were going to say is because I am the one who came up with that ridiculous exchange." Keeping his hands open, he took another step forward. "_I_ am the rebellion."

"You can't possibly expect me to believe that." Rei's eyes flicked from his eyes to his open hands and back. "It makes _no_ sense–"

A bit of anger flashed through his eyes. "It doesn't," he said, "because for some reason your brother the king has not seen fit to tell you why he truly sent you here."

Rei's temper flared: how dare he insult her brother? "You," she began angrily, but he cut her off.

"Why don't you just read the message you were supposed to bring me? Perhaps that will let you know that I'm not lying."

Rei glared at him for one moment longer, trying to buy time to think. But as a whole minute dragged past without her thinking of anything else to do, she conceded defeat.

"Fine," she said, and lifted a hand. Then, remembering where the scroll was, she tensed. "Give me a moment."

Both men eyed her uncomprehendingly. She flushed. "It's…in here." She motioned vaguely at the front of her bodice.

Kentar hid a smile. Assan motioned him out of the tent. "Wait outside."

"What about you?" Rei demanded.

"I'll turn around."

Rei huffed at him, but he only raised an eyebrow at her and turned so that his back was to her…and his feet were planted firmly before the tent exit, blocking it.

Face and neck burning, Rei turned around herself, face to the rippling wall, and withdrew the scroll from within her slip. It was hot and damp from her perspiration.

She fingered it for a moment, peeking over her shoulder. As though sensing her eyes, the king glanced over his shoulder as well and, seeing she was done, turned back around.

"Go on," he said, almost gently.

Rei fingered the familiar wax shape of her brother's seal: a fin cutting out of rough water. Then she broke it and unrolled the tightly furled scroll.

Kentar poked his head back into the tent and was saying something urgently to his king, but Rei didn't notice. Her eyes were fixed on what was scrawled across the scroll in Endymion's familiar, cramped hand–permission for Lord of Kentak, Emperor of Muhassin, Head of House Itto, One and Only True King of Andalusia, His Most Exalted and Benevolent Highness Assan al-Numa, to marry _her._


End file.
